Q&A 43 What comic-based television series would you like to see?

In Q & A, a weekly feature of Fantastic Fangirls, we ask our staff to tackle a simple question — then open the floor to comments.

What comic-based television series would you like to see?

Anika

This is harder than it sounds. I’m actually pretty picky about shows I actively watch. Background noise can be almost anything but shows I sit down to pay attention to, or would request, that’s different. And my choices tend to fall under “medical drama”, “legal drama”, or “space drama”. I love superheroes, but on TV? Not so much. It is honestly hard for me to imagine a comics-based TV series I’d want to watch (not counting my toons, I adore Justice League, Teen Titans and Iron Man Armored Adventures to name three).

So I am going to go with my heart over my head this time and choose: The Fantastic Four. I love them and their ridiculous ways. The movies were not so good, but I think the medium strangled them. You can’t tell a proper F4 story in a two-to-three hour movie. But a series? A series about a dysfunctional family of superheroes? Who do media appearances to fund their work? And could sneak in an interest in science to a science-interest-starved-America?

I would watch that. And even if it was horribly bad, I would still watch it and I would even still love it. I know this because I own both those movies.

Caroline

X-Men: First Class is the latest Marvel property reported to be in development for the big screen. Writer Josh Schwartz, who has worked on The O.C. and Gossip Girl, is attached to the project, and from what I understand he has a pretty good track record. Still, at the risk of being ungrateful about one of my favorite franchises getting a high-profile treatment, I’m not sure the world needs another X-Men movie. At best, the movie will spend a couple hours letting us get to know new versions of our favorite characters, then leave us hanging for a couple years for a sequel. Of course, I love the X-Men in high school concept, but it seems like something that would be more fun to see as a weekly show. X-Men has always worked best as an ensemble story, with shameless soap opera elements, and a weekly live action drama seems like a great place to develop that.

Jennifer

At the risk of stealing Sigrid’s thunder below, my first thought for an awesome comic book TV show is one of my new favorite comics, Brian Wood’s DMZ. Wood’s portrayal of a dystopian future New York City as the unpredictable center of a second American Civil War would play out with gritty intensity on a cable channel like FX or HBO. And the television format would allow the producers to showcase what are often the best parts of the comic book series — the stories that go beyond photojournalist protagonist Matty Roth’s point of view and show us how others survive and thrive in the fantastically-detailed world that Wood has created. Plus, its diverse cast would provide much-needed work and exposure for non-white actors on television. The politics of the piece might be difficult to portray faithfully, depending on how much creative control the showrunners retained, but I’d still like to see TV try its hand at bringing to life this vivid universe.

Sigrid

I’d like to see Local, by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, as a television show. Done up like an AMC-style drama, with tons of attention to detail (as befits the original detail in the comic.) Each single issue of the comic could be drawn out into two or three hours, adding more of the story to each vignette. Each short arc would focus on the town in which it took place, bringing to life the main characters from that particular story — whether or not Megan is the lead.

As for casting, I’d like to see Ellen Page play Megan.

So what about you? What comic-based television series would you like to see?

Personally, I think the less FX-heavy properties would work better. Maybe DAREDEVIL, or HEROES FOR HIRE. Oh…DOCTOR STRANGE!

Anika

@ Dan – have you ever seen Blackjack? It’s an anime about a doctor fallen from favor who works, usually for the very wealthy, on problems of a supernatural nature. I imagine a Dr. Strange tv series to be like that. It would considered House meets Fringe. Wanda would be his nurse and Agatha Harkness a reoccurring antagonist ….yes, this maybe is my alternate answer.

@Anika I’m not a big anime fan…but, your concept for a STRANGE TV show appeals to me. I picture Ed Quinn (EUREKA’s Nathan Stark) as the good doctor.

Also…X-FACTOR. Geez, how did that one slip by me?

Twyst

Exiles.

sigrid

@Anika I don’t know *why* FF looks like a soap opera in my head, but there you have it. Full of hushed, dramatic conferences in hallways, and people grabbing each other by the upper arm to say something Terribly Important, and last-minute urgent kisses, and meaningful looks, and domestic scenes, and . . . .

I’d, of course, love to see a She-Hulk cartoon. (I don’t think you could pull off a live action show as the FX would be a little too much.) I don’t know if it’s nostalgia for my childhood superhero cartoons in the late 80s/early 90s, but for some reason, I’d like to see Byrne’s (and later other authors and artists) Sensational She-Hulk run used in it.

Alternatively, Fables would make an awesome HBO miniseries. I think anywhere else they might make it too kid-friendly.

I’d also love to see Pixar do a Mouse Guard movie.

sigrid

@Erica Showtime would sex-up Fables too much, but HBO might get it right.

@Dan I like the idea of X-Factor, but not as an ongoing series. Something short, like a 13-episode thing . . .

Well lets just pull out the Vertigo catalog and send that in! Scalped, Fables (Not Jack of Fables, sorry) 100 Bullets, Sandman and even more so Lucifer. Exterminators… oh that list goes on and on.

Other than that I think Pax Romana would be a great TV show on Showtime or HBO, at least the concept anyway. It would be Rome meets Band of Brothers (or any other decent war series/movie) Expand the story from the comic out to show all the stuff it summarized, like that actual fighting and politics. I seriously want to see the scene where the day-after-tomorrow fighting force comes down on the Roman army.

Selena

I can see Y – The Last Man (preferably with my problems re: villains and their motivations resolved in the tv version by rewriting them), but would vote for either Ex Machina or Runaways to be filmed first. Good ensemble stories both, and in Runaways they could bring in the movie-watching crowd by the occasional Marvel big screen hero getting defeated by kids. Ex Machina, by contrast, would fill the gap left by The West Wing.

Wired

I love cop shows, procedurals, and anything with an interrogation room and a bullpen of crimefighters. So I’d love to see Powers as a cop drama. If CSI can do reasonably sympathetic investigations of furries, then Law&CSI: Powers could handle it.

I’d love to see a X-Factor Investigations show. I think aside from Strong Guy and Darwin, the effects could be done with ease and I think the team’s chemistry would be a drawing point. FX pushes “Rescue Me” with the dysfunction of Dennis Leary’s character on the show and I think Madrox offers something very similar to that.

Another comic I think could be a fun show to watch would be something along the lines of the Question. No big alien threats, no flashy powers, just a person trying to find the answers. Now I’m a big Vic Sage so, of course, I’d like to see Vic as the title character but Renee is his equal in a lot of ways and his superior in some.